Elizabeth Kahn and Emily Strupp

Social Studies, Term III Lesson Plan

To be taught: 11/17/2014
What:
Third graders at our school participate in a Social Studies unit every fall that is focused
on teaching about community and cultural inclusiveness through rice. This year, we as student
teachers will be primarily responsible for teaching this unit, and we will begin by reading aloud a
book about rice dishes in various cultures, Everybody Cooks Rice. Though the entire unit is
centered in Social Studies, we have chosen a particular lesson to serve as the social studies
component for the term assignment. For this 45-minute session, we will teach a lesson
surrounding the following topic of inquiry: how do we get the rice that we eat? Where does it
come from, and what process does it go through to get here? Because students will have spent
the previous week focusing on various rice dishes that are commonly cooked in different
cultures, we believe this will be an opportunity to further solidify the links between both
different types of people and different types of rice. We plan for students to learn that all rice
must undergo essentially the same process before it can be bought and cooked in any home. As
students have been learning recently about geography ranging from neighborhood to globe, we
plan to emphasize the geographical journey made by rice after it is grown in several continents
around the world. We will begin at the rice paddy, teaching about the work that goes into
cultivating the rice that we can so easily purchase at the store and cook quickly with a stove or
microwave. Our goal is for students to begin to understand rice as a piece of global culture that
both can be adapted to create unique dishes and can also unite those from different countries or
traditions.
This lesson will require background research on our part as teachers, as we plan to
become experts on the basics of the journey of rice before we teach it to our students. We will
look into geographical production of rice across continents, the process by which it is harvested,
milled, and packaged, and we will develop a bank of related vocabulary to share with students
during the lesson and throughout the remainder of the unit.
Connection to Lizs question: This social studies lesson will introduce the agricultural
production cycle of rice, emphasizing order of events, the global nature of rice as a food staple,
and comparing and contrasting manual and mechanical methods of growing and harvesting rice.
In these ways, this lesson will address my question, of how thematic instruction can strengthen
understanding across topics, by using rice as a means to engage students historical thinking
methods, asking them to ponder and explore the history of the bowl of rice before them. This
will be the third lesson in the Rice unit, the first two having focused on literacy with a read aloud
of Everybody Cooks Rice and a group, graphic organizer activity exploring the book further the
previous week.
Connection to Emilys question: Throughout Term III and the interdisciplinary unit focused on
rice, I plan to investigate and attempt ways of utilizing informal and formative assessments while
teaching. I will challenge myself to integrate assessment of instruction into each lesson in this
unit and find creative ways for students to demonstrate learning. During this particular lesson, I
will observe students and listen to their comments and questions during the presentation to assess
engagement and understanding. I will utilize an activity involving writing, drawing and

sequencing to further assess students understanding and the degree to which they are interested
in the material.
How:
This lesson is designed for whole-class instruction. The central teaching tool for this
lesson will be a power point presentation entitled The History of Your Bowl of Rice, in which
we will teach students the process by which rice comes to be sitting in bowls on our dinner
tables. We will present this history by showing traditional and modern methods side by side,
demonstrating that each step of the process can be accomplished using different kinds of
equipment. We will develop this powerpoint in consultation with our classroom mentors,
ensuring that text and visuals are both understandable to our third graders and relevant to what
they have been learning in social studies thus far.
Prior to beginning the presentation, we will utilize concrete materials in order to spark
students curiosity, aiming to point our lesson onto an inquiry-based path. We will pass out
bowls of rice, allowing students to develop hypotheses before acquiring new information. We
will then ask students to talk in their table groups about where they think their rice came from
and how long they think it took to get here from its beginnings.
The powerpoint itself will include video clips and images, as we plan to present the
information in a multimodal fashion. In order to maximize student involvement and cooperative
learning during what could otherwise become a straightforward lecture, we will incorporate turnand-talks, a practice very familiar to our students, at deliberate times throughout the lesson.
Following the presentation, students will complete a sequencing activity in their table groups,
utilizing information from the powerpoint and videos in order to create their own version of the
history of a bowl of rice (in other words, the process it must go through before we can eat it).
Students will then use their own versions of this sequence as a resource later on in the unit, as we
are planning a culminating activity in which each student will compose his or her own
combination nonfiction/fiction books documenting rices journey from the growing field to a
special dish at his or her own familys table.
Why:
While our third graders do not get a great deal of social studies education throughout the
semester (at least when compared with literacy and math), they are accustomed to participating
in group discussions, sharing ideas, and making connections. We plan to tap into these skills,
particularly those for connection-making, in order to broaden their social studies learning and
enable them to view learning about global topics as relevant to their own daily lives. Because we
agree that social studies lessons should focus more upon asking and answering questions than
doling out facts (Levstik & Barton, 2006), we have chosen to begin with an unknown: How did
this bowl of rice get from a field somewhere in the world to our classroom? Hiebert and
colleagues (1997) say, For something to be a problem for a student, he or she must see it as a
challenge and must want to know the answer (p. 19). Although they are referring to
mathematics, we believe this notion is applicable to all subject matter, especially when working
with students in the elementary grades. While we may pique the interest of a few students simply
by telling them we will teach where rice originates, theory indicates that it is far more likely for
students to become invested in the lesson if they have been able to mull over the question that
drives the lesson. Thus far in our emerging teaching practices, we have seen evidence of this. In

this case, that question is about all of the steps and stages that came before a bowl of rice was
here in our classroom.
Additionally, we are aware of the benefits of using visual sources in order to tap into a
[wide] range of background knowledge, and this is particularly important when teaching a topic
that is relatively broad or contains brand new information (Levstik & Barton, 2006, p. 89). One
of the Common Core standards for third grade indicates that students should be able to recall
information from experiences or gather information from print and digital sources and take
brief notes on sources and sort evidence into provided categories. Because our students have not
yet had much experience with research or note-taking, we have designed an activity to scaffold
the process. In order to cater to varying intelligences (Gardner, 1993) we will present the
information multimodally: through our own explanations, through text on the screen, and
through video clips with accompanying audio. We will give students a pre-prepared organizer on
which they can demonstrate their understanding of the information they have acquired.
The culminating idea we plan to convey through this lesson, especially by tying it to prior
knowledge from a read aloud of Everybody Cooks Rice, is that rice is a part of our global culture.
It is grown in very different places, it is processed using different methods and machines, it
appears in stores in different varieties, and people in various cultures use it to create lots of
different dishes. Ultimately, though, we are all eating rice! By simultaneously teaching the steps
of rice production and contrasting production methods, we hope to stimulate thinking about the
various journeys taken by our food and how this experience is shared by so many people
throughout the world.
Lesson Plan
Goals and Objectives:
Through a focus on rice:
Students will understand the global nature of food production, consumption, and culture.
Students will demonstrate understanding the specific sequence of events, rice cultivation, and
understanding how said sequence leads to rice being present in their own lives. We will lead
students toward this objective by including cooking and eating as the final steps of this sequence,
and we will make specific references to the idea that this bowl of rice could be the one they eat at
home for dinner. This learning objective is central to the entire rice unit, as it relates to ideas of
cultural inclusiveness and diversity. At the end of the unit, we plan to utilize and reinforce this
understanding in a culminating project: each student will create their own books that include the
steps of rice production (either modern or traditional) and end with a page showing the student
and his or her family cooking and eating a rice dish they may typically have at home.
Students will demonstrate proficiency in comparing and contrasting traditional and modern
agricultural practices, with an emphasis on commonalities and the advantages of diversity.
Standards:
Common Core Standards, Grade 3
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.3.3

Joseph Nelson 11/15/2014 8:58 PM

Comment [1]: This aspect was mentioned
in the What, How, and Why section.
Include how and why you will lead students
toward this learning objective.

Describe the relationship between a series of historical events, scientific ideas or concepts, or
steps in technical procedures in a text, using language that pertains to time, sequence, and
cause/effect.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.3.7
Use information gained from illustrations (e.g., maps, photographs) and the words in a text to
demonstrate understanding of the text (e.g., where, when, why, and how key events occur).
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.3.8
Recall information from experiences or gather information from print and digital sources; take
brief notes on sources and sort evidence into provided categories.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.3.2
Determine the main ideas and supporting details of a text read aloud or information presented in
diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively, and orally.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.3.6
Acquire and use accurately grade-appropriate conversational, general academic, and domainspecific words and phrases, including those that signal spatial and temporal relationships (e.g.,
After dinner that night we went looking for them).
Materials and Preparation:
bags of rice (brown and white)
paper or plastic bowls (12)
smart board and laptop
prepared digital version of sequence sheet
sequence worksheets for students (x6)
scissors
colored pencils, markers, crayons
Classroom arrangement and management issues:
Before beginning the lesson, we will let students know that we would like to start out our lesson
on where rice comes from by allowing them to explore the rice themselves. We will tell students
that we have decided to do this because we know they, as third graders, can be responsible
enough to have the rice on the tables, investigating it for the first 2 minutes, and then placing it in
the middle of the tables and leaving it alone during the presentation. We will assure them they
will have another chance to touch and look at the rice later in the lesson.
During the presentation, we will have students sit at their desks, turning their chairs
toward the smartboard if they are not already facing that direction. The teacher for the lesson will
begin by walking around the classroom and distributing rice bowls, bringing each student into
the lesson with this brief interaction. During the powerpoint and included video clips, the teacher
will stand at the front of the room, navigating through the presentation on the smartboard, and
students will face the teacher in their chairs. Our students are accustomed to participating in
whole group lessons and participating in discussion from their desks, so we do not anticipate any
major difficulties with this.
Emilys accommodation: For a student with an IEP that tends to easily become
distracted by objects in or on her desk, I will allow her to hold a whiteboard and dry erase
marker and let her know she can use it to keep track of some of the things she is learning during

Emily Strupp 11/16/2014 5:10 PM

Deleted: 24
Joseph Nelson 11/15/2014 8:59 PM
Comment [2]: What about clean up
materials? Paper towels, multi-purpose
cleaner, etc. Will kids need bibs? Napkins?
Or, aprons?
Emily Strupp 12/10/2014 7:42 PM
Comment [3]: Students will not need
clean-up materials, as we will not be
working with cooked rice during this lesson.
Joseph Nelson 11/15/2014 9:02 PM
Comment [4]: How will they do this? I
would structure this investigation for them.
Or, just give them parameters/guidelines for
doing so.
Emily Strupp 12/10/2014 7:46 PM
Comment [5]: We will pose questions,
written on the smart board, to guide
students investigations. (See plan for lesson
introduction)

the presentation. I will tell her that Id like to see it afterward to ensure she is writing or drawing
relevant information.
After the powerpoint is completed, we will explain the sequencing activity while standing
near the smartboard, facing the class and modeling the activity on the board. After students begin
working on the activity, we will circulate around student desks, answering questions and giving
reminders as necessary.
Plan [3rd Grade, 40 minutes total]
Introduction, the hook [5 minutes]:
We will begin our lesson by briefly reminding students of the classroom rule, Be
Responsible. We will let them know that we will be handing out two bowls of rice per table and
that we would like them to make observations and interact with the rice for about two minutes.
After which time we would like them to place the bowls in the center of their tables and give us
their full attention.
Before handing out the bowls we will introduce a few focusing questions, which will be
written on the smartboard for guided conversation: Where do you think this rice came from?
How did it get here? Did it always look like this? What else do you wonder about these bowls of
rice?
We will then distribute the bowls and invite the children to explore them for two minutes.
After the children have had a chance to interact with the rice and discuss the focusing questions
with their table groups we will gather a few responses from the class and use them as a jumping
off point for our presentation and say something to the effect of:
Today were going to talk about the history of these bowls of rice. Most rice comes from
the same plant and it all goes through the same, basic sequence of events. But, a bowl of
rice can have one of two different histories. Rice can come from different places, and it
can be produced with different tools and technology. Today, we are going to learn about
both the traditional and modern ways of planting, harvesting, and processing rice.
Here we will ask students what they think we mean by traditional, aniticipating responses such
as, old fashioned, the first way, the old way, or the way passed down in generations. We will ask
a few students for their responses and then synthesize the class understanding with a statement
like:
So, the traditional way is how rice has been being cultivated for thousands of years, there
practices were passed down from generation to generation and involve basic tools,
animals, and doing a lot things by hand. Whereas, modern cultivation uses new
technologies, machines, very precise practices to mass-produce rice as efficiently as
possible. Both processes are valuable and effective.
We will then remind students of connection that this, like all lessons in our thematic unit, have
with Everybody Cooks Rice, specifically:
Just as we saw in Everybody Cooks Rice that there are lots of ways to prepare rice and
lots of dishes to make, well learn today that there are lots of different places that grow
rice and diverse methods and machines used to cultivate it. Ultimately though, we are all
eating rice! Eating rice is a common experience shared by so many people throughout
the world.

Joseph Nelson 11/15/2014 9:03 PM

Comment [6]: Excellent!

Joseph Nelson 11/15/2014 9:05 PM

Comment [7]: Maybe a handout to assist
with their investigation? Ask basic
questions: What color is the rice? What does
it feel like? Describe the rice. Draw a picture
of the rice, etc.
Joseph Nelson 11/15/2014 9:06 PM
Comment [8]: Great questions!

Emily Strupp 12/10/2014 7:38 PM

Comment [9]: I decided to change the
introduction in the final draft so that
students will not assume that one method
(either traditional or modern) produces
white rice and the other produces brown
rice. I want to make it clear that both
methods can produce both kinds. In the
science lesson, the step that separates
brown rice from white will be emphasized.

Joseph Nelson 11/15/2014 9:08 PM

Comment [10]: Extending prior
knowledge, wonderful!

Body of the Lesson (30 minutes)

After introducing the rice bowls and focusing questions we will give a presentation using
Powerpoint entitled The History of Your Bowl of Rice (see Appendix) that will detail the
sequence of events that have culminated in us having rice in the classroom today. Please see the
appendix for a copy of the presentation, including our informational notes and the interactive
questioning we will use to gauge student understanding and promote engagement. We anticipate
that this presentation, including time for questions and answers, will take approximately 30
minutes.

Joseph Nelson 11/15/2014 9:09 PM

Comment [11]: I would put a time stamp
on this mini-lecture; How long do you think
it should take?

Debrief, closure [5 minutes]

In closing, we will review with students what they have learned and discuss next steps.
We will harken back to language used in introducing the lesson, reminding students that:
We knew there were lots of ways to prepare and eat rice, and now we have seen that
there are different ways to cultivate rice in lots of different places around the world. But,
whether modern or traditional practices are used, the process itself stays the same, it is
just supplemented by technology in some cases. Both ways work and are valuable in their
own way. Just as all different rice dishes work and are valuable in their own way.
Before moving on, we will add new vocabulary words to our Rice Bowl of Vocabulary, which
we will be using throughout the unit. New words will include: paddy, transplanting, harvesting,
threshing, polishing, and sickle. We will then introduce the follow up activity to students where
they will each be given a sheet showing both the modern and traditional components of rice
cultivation out of order. We will ask students to cut out each step and put them in the correct
order, essentially creating two timelines side by side (see Appendix). Students will be expected
to use their previous practice with and knowledge of sequences of events in order to accomplish
this task successfully. They will be expected to work with members of their group (3-4 students
each) and agree upon the correct order based on information from the presentation and logical
sequencing skills.
Assessment of goals/objectives listed above:
In order to assess proficiency in comparing and contrasting the methods presented, we will make
note of student responses to questions posed during the presentation. Specifically, when we ask
them to turn and talk about a particular step in the process, comparing and contrasting methods,
we will listen for evidence that students understand that both processes produce the same result.
An exemplary response might be: Even though one way takes the husks of by grinding by hand
and one way uses a big machine, both of them turn the brown rice into white rice. We will
audio or video record the lessons so that we can go back and analyze the types of responses
given.
The subsequent worksheet will further assess this understanding, as we will ask students both to
put the steps of rice production in order and to match up the steps of the traditional method with
that of the modern methods.

Joseph Nelson 11/15/2014 9:12 PM

Comment [12]: How will they know what
is the correct order? Will they be using their
compare/contrast skills to put these in
order? This could be a form of assessment
too.

Joseph Nelson 11/15/2014 9:12 PM

Comment [13]: How will you keep track
of what students say?
Joseph Nelson 11/15/2014 9:13 PM
Comment [14]: See previous comment.

Joseph Nelson 11/15/2014 9:13 PM

Comment [15]: I see.

Anticipating students responses and our possible responses

Management issues:
We will make clear that our expectations are the same as the classroom teachers and thus
reinforce already established classroom routines and norms. Rewards and consequences that are
normally in place in both of our classes will be mentioned if needed, namely star cards for
individual incentives and a marble jar for whole class incentives. For Emilys class specifically:
Students will be reminded that if they do not follow class rules, I may have to move their
individual cards from green to yellow or from yellow to orange. However, I do not anticipate
that this will be necessary.
Response to content of the lesson:
We anticipate that students will be engaged with the content of the lesson once we have
posed the initial point of inquiry: where did these bowls of rice come from? Throughout the short
presentation, we expect that a few students may express thoughts or connections out loud but that
most will listen and think about the information being presented. When we ask them to turn and
talk to a partner (predicting the origins of their rice and discussing differences between
traditional and modern production methods), we anticipate most students will understand the
prompts and engage in discussion with tablemates. We believe it is possible that a few students
will ask questions about rice production to which we do not yet have the answers. In this case,
we will thank them for asking great questions, and we will record them for further research. We
will then include answers to their questions in a subsequent lesson during the unit on rice.
While students work on the sequencing activity, we anticipate some confusion about the
order of certain steps, namely threshing, drying, husking, and polishing, as these may be
unfamiliar words and concepts. In order to make this more clear before the activity begins, we
will do a vocabulary review in which we review the words threshing, husking, and polishing in
our rice bowl of vocabulary (a poster started the week before). During the activity, will tell
students that a teacher should check in with each group before anything is glued. If students have
steps out of order, we will ask questions prompting them to think about logical sequence rather
than simply telling them the answers.
Accommodations
For students who may find the material too challenging
If there are students who do not finish the sequencing activity in the allotted time, we will ask
them to put any unfinished pieces into their Social Studies folders. As we will not be present the
day following each lesson, we will ask the cooperating teachers to ask students to finish their
sequencing activity during a period of independent work (writing workshop, reading workshop,
social studies, or hodge-podge time) on the following day.
For students who may need greater challenge and/or finish early
As we have planned lesson and activity content that should exceed the time allotted for this
lesson, we do not anticipate that students will finish early. If a few do finish early or have extra
hodge podge time later, though, we will include an optional, additional task. If there is time,
these students will be asked to write their own version of an informative paragraph about the
process of growing, harvesting and processing rice. Students are accustomed to encountering
these types of passages in their homework, and they are just beginning a literacy unit on

Joseph Nelson 11/15/2014 9:16 PM

Comment [16]: Could you incorporate a
brief video that illustrates this process?
Emily Strupp 12/10/2014 7:48 PM
Comment [17]: I did not end up using a
video, but I had students explain each step
as review for the entire class before we
began working.

Joseph Nelson 11/15/2014 9:18 PM

Comment [18]: Will they know what this
entails? Is this a common practice in the
class? If not, it may require more
scaffolding.

informational texts. We dont believe this task will require significant scaffolding, as those who
finish early are likely to be students who need less writing support. However, we will provide
paper and written instructions for this task, and we will be available to answer questions or
provide clarification during the activity. Information written in a paragraph like this will be
helpful to students later on in the unit. Additionally, this task will provide an additional
opportunity for students to process factual information and express it in their own words, an
important piece of the third grade standards.
References
Gardner, H. (1993). Multiple intelligences: The theory in practice. New York: Basic Books.
Hiebert, J., Carpenter, T. P., Fennema, E., Fuson, K.C., Wearne, D., Murray, H., , & Human,
P. (1997). Making sense: Teaching and learning mathematics and understanding. Portsmouth,
NH: Heinemann.
Levstik, L.S. & Barton, K. C. (2011). Doing history: Investigating with children in elementary
and middle schools. New York: Taylor & Francis.
SS Lesson notes:

Emily Strupp 11/16/2014 5:53 PM

Deleted: This i